Teachers go on strike in France where classrooms have remained open and staff are demanding higher salaries amid Covid crisis
Teachers have gone on strike in France demanding higher salaries and more government support amid the Covid-19 crisis.
Schools have remained open since September because of the government's concern over learning gaps, despite threats of a third lockdown in the country.
Schoolteachers and university students marched together in protests or went on strike Tuesday around France to make their demands.
'No virus protocol, no school!' read posters carried by schoolteachers, demanding better virus protections at their schools.
'Sick of Zoom!' chanted university students, frustrated that they've been barred from campuses since October.
The common concern at Tuesday's protests in Paris, Marseilles, Lille, Lyon and other cities around France was economic.
Teachers have gone on strike in France demanding higher salaries and more government support amid the Covid-19 crisis. Pictured: French professors, students and nurses march for the revaluation of salaries and against the precariousness of students in Paris, January 26
Schools have remained open since September because of the government's concern over learning gaps, despite threats of a third lockdown in the country.
Schoolteachers and university students marched together in protests or went on strike Tuesday around France to make their demands. Pictured: Students demonstrate in Lille, northern France on January 26 to demand more government support amid the pandemic
Teachers unions, who are negotiating with the government for improved conditions, want higher salaries and for the government to hire more educators after years of cost cuts.
The education ministry says about 12 percent of teachers nationwide took part in a national call to strike Tuesday.
Students, meanwhile, are seeking more government financial support and want to call attention to emotional troubles among young people cut off from friends, professors and job opportunities amid the pandemic.
Even as the French government considers imposing a third lockdown, the prime minister allowed first-year students to return to partial classes this week.
He acknowledging that lockdown-related mental health problems among young people are also a public health concern.
France has among the world's highest number of virus infections and deaths.
Pictured: Students demonstrate during a rally as part of a nation-wide striking day of teachers and students over salaries for teachers and the government's handling of the health pandemic in schools, on January 26 in Paris
'No virus protocol, no school!' read posters carried by schoolteachers, demanding better virus protections at their schools. Pictured: Students demonstrate in Paris
A protester holds a sign reading 'Stop Contempt, More Teachers, More Salaries' as French teachers, students and National Education workers demonstrate as part of a strike for jobs, wages and working conditions in Paris, January 26
Teachers unions, who are negotiating with the government for improved conditions, want higher salaries and for the government to hire more educators after years of cost cuts. Pictured: A student holds a banner during a demonstration, January 26, in Lyon
The number of people hospitalised in France for COVID-19 rose by more than 1,000 over the last two days, a trend unseen since November 16.
On Monday, the number of patients in intensive care units for the disease exceeded 3,000 for the first time since December 9.
A growing number of medical experts have called for a third lockdown in France while the government rolls out the vaccine, but French media reported that President Emmanuel Macron was trying to avoid such a measure.
As of Monday, France had vaccinated 1,092,958 people, which equates to 1.67 per 100 people in the country. In comparison, the UK has vaccinated 7.04 million people, or 10.38 per 100 people.
The common concern at Tuesday's protests in Paris, Marseille and other cities around France was economic. Pictured: Students hold a cardboard made to look like a laptop with a cage for a screen in Lyon on January 26. 'Sick of Zoom!' chanted university students, frustrated that they've been barred from campuses since October
A protester holds a sign reading 'Digitalized education = Low Cost Education' as French teachers, students and National Education workers demonstrate as part of a strike for jobs, wages and working conditions in Paris, January 26
The number of people hospitalised in France for COVID-19 rose by more than a 1,000 over the last two days, a trend unseen since November 16. A third national lockdown is looming, but despite this schools have remained open
Macron hopes a 6 p.m. curfew put in place earlier this month will be enough to rein in the surge in new infections prompted by the emergence of more contagious variants of the virus.
Getting the number of patients treated in ICUs for COVID-19 below the 3,000 limit was the main justification for replacing the second lockdown with the national curfew on December 15.
At 3,081, the ICU total is less than half its all time high of 7,148 on April 4, but has grown almost every day since January 7.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Bloomberg Television that a new lockdown would make it very difficult for the country to reach its 2021 target of 6 percent economic growth.
The government had also aimed to bring the average new daily cases below 5,000 before lifting the second lockdown.
A growing number of medical experts have called for a third lockdown in France while the government rolls out the vaccine, but French media reported that President Emmanuel Macron was trying to avoid such a measure. Pictured: Macron on January 26 in Paris
A Protester displayed a sign on his bag reading 'Blanquer Authoritarian Minister' depicting French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer as a police man during a protest, January 26
The education ministry says about 12 percent of teachers nationwide took part in a national call to strike Tuesday
Students are seeking more government financial support and want to call attention to emotional troubles among young people cut off from friends, professors and job opportunities amid the pandemic. Pictured: Teachers and students protest in Paris on January 26
After a 54,440 high on November 7, the seven-day moving average of daily new infections, which averages out reporting irregularities, fell to 10,348 on December 4 but is now back up to 20,240 after a two-month high of 20,447 on Monday.
The daily tally of new COVID infections was 22086 on Tuesday, while France's cumulative total of cases now stands at 3,079,943, the sixth-highest in the world.
The country's COVID-19 death toll was up by 612 on Tuesday, taking the cumulative total to 74,106, the world's seventh highest.
On Monday, the seven-day moving average of new fatalities increased to 401, the highest since December 9, but down slightly to 395 on Tuesday
Government minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said on Tuesday that there is no need for the French government to make a decision on a new national lockdown at this stage, as it is still evaluating results from its current night curfew.
France has imposed a 6pm-6am curfew, though some doctors and medics have called for a new lockdown to tackle a resurgence of COVID-19 cases.
'To the best of my knowledge, and based on the data we have at our disposal, at this stage there is no reason to decide on a lockdown,' she told BFM TV on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said that he had decided to maintain to 21-28 days the gap between the injection of the first and the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19.
Veran told a news conference he made that choice out of caution, citing a lack of scientific evidence that extending the gap would be totally safe.
Dismay in France over vaccine flops
News that France had fallen further behind in the race to develop Covid-19 vaccines caused dismay on Tuesday, reigniting a debate about the country's standing in the world and its scientific prowess.
France has a celebrated history of medical breakthroughs, including from Louis Pasteur, a pioneer in microbiology and the inventor of vaccines against rabies and anthrax.
With the world-renowned research centre that bears his name in Paris, the Pasteur Institute, as well as leading pharma group Sanofi, the country looked well placed to produce its own jab to protect against coronavirus.
But the Pasteur Institute announced Monday that it was abandoning research on its most promising prospect, while Sanofi has said its candidate for inoculation will not be ready before the end of 2021 at best.
'It's a sign of the decline of the country and this decline is unacceptable,' Francois Bayrou, a close political ally of pro-business President Emmanuel Macron, said Tuesday.
Bayrou, head of the centrist MoDem party and named by Macron last year as commissioner for long-term government planning, said the problem was a brain-drain from France to the United States.
Pictured: French President Emmanuel Macron, attends a video conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris, January 26. News that France had fallen further behind in the race to develop Covid-19 vaccines caused dismay on Tuesday
Speaking on France Inter radio, he said it was 'not acceptable that our best researchers, the most brilliant of our researchers, are sucked up by the American system'.
He referred to Stephane Bancel, a Frenchman who heads US-based biotech firm Moderna, whose vaccine was the second to be approved for use in the United States and Europe.
Experts say the US government has invested more in vaccine research in the previous decades, while innovative companies are also drawn to the country because raising funds from private investors is easier and quicker.
Long-time Socialist minister and ex-presidential candidate Segolene Royal blamed 'liberal ideology' for reductions in public funding for vaccine research, while Communist Party head Fabien Roussel called the setbacks a 'humiliation'.
The failure of French Covid vaccine research so far touches on several sensitive issues for the country.
The political class and many voters have long worried about France's relative decline in power and influence - the ominous 'declassement' - in an increasingly globalised world.
This tendency is seen by many analysts as part of the explanation for strong support for the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, whose rhetoric is tinged with nostalgia for the supposed glory days of the last century.
Since World War II, French governments have always had a strong industrial policy which has seen the promotion and protection of national champions amid particular rivalry with 'les anglo-saxons' in Britain and America.
Sanofi, the only remaining major French pharma group, has come in for fierce public criticism, particularly in May last year when CEO Paul Hudson - a British citizen - said the United States would get any vaccine it produced before the rest of the world.
Pictured: A bottle reading 'Vaccine Covid-19' next to French bio pharmaceutical company Sanofi logo. Sanofi will help Pfizer and BioNTech to produce their Covid-19 vaccine and should package more than 100 million doses for the EU by the end of 2021
The group followed up this public relations disaster at home by announcing 1,700 job cuts a month later, including 1,000 in France.
Amid the self-criticism and introspection, some experts and politicians have called on France to avoid taking the vaccine setbacks too hard.
Chance plays a major role in cutting-edge research, evident in the work of the most celebrated past French researchers from Pasteur to Nobel Prize-winning chemist Marie Curie.
Nathalie Coutinet, an economics of medicine researcher at the Sorbonne University in Paris, said many different approaches were being taken by scientists worldwide in the Covid fight.
The Pasteur Institute bet on adapting a measles vaccine to fight Covid, while Sanofi tried to tweak one of its flu jabs.
The most successful approach among Western researchers turned out to be 'messenger RNA,' which was harnessed by German biotech group BioNTech as well as Moderna, whose jabs have been approved.
'If everyone had opted for RNS Messenger and it hadn't worked, we would have said it was stupid,' Coutinet told AFP.